20220202-02

… the Sophists, who taught the art of rhetoric, played a significant role in the demise of the Polis, argues Kitto in The Greeks… for Pirsig in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Mainteancne, the Sophists are the vanquished heroes… they are the ones teaching Quality (Virtue, Excellence)… Kitto tells us they were instrumental in the demise of the polis, through which the Greek concept of aretê (admired by Pirsig) was inculcated into the people as a whole… there could not be two more different ideas of the impact of the Sophists on subsequent Greek culture and Western civilization… and Pirsig read The Greeks